Anyways, the second tasting of November was deliberately pushed towards the end of the month as it was in honour of Movember, and the extra couple of weeks meant that there were some moustaches on display, unlike during the Smoking Section tasting where MoSista Charly‘s stick on lip warmer was the only thing worthy of the name ‘Mo’. Anyways, we gathered upstairs at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society with bottles donated from a variety of sponsors and all the proceeds going straight to the Whisky4Movember fund raising efforts. Unfortunately we had some generous sponsors and even excluding the emergency bottle I had in my bag, just in case any of the whiskies didn’t arrive, we had eight drams to get through. It’s a hard life…

First up, tasted blind as usual, was a mid-golden dram. On the nose it had sour apple skins, butter, cream, light spice, and milky butter icing. To taste it was creamy up front, with fruit and woody spice down the middle. It was quite light in body and very easily drinkable, with a finish of spiced creme brulee. An excellent start to the evening and not particularly surprising when the paper was pulled off and it turned out to be the Great King Street Artist’s Blend from Compass Box. I’ve written about this before, both here in a post about the Compass Box twitter tasting and in a work post around release time, and my opinion stays the same – a versatile, tasty and easy drinking whisky, and a great place to push people who assume that all blends are rubbish. Thanks to Compass Box for donating the bottle.

Next on the list was the first of two drams donated by our hosts – the SMWS. On the nose it had spiced vinegar, pungent fruit, sweet and sour sauce, treacle toffee, Love Hearts and a touch of minty menthol. To taste it was big and meaty, with some drying tannic wood, spiced apples, sour grapes, apple wood and a hint of woody smoke. It finished very differently, with strawberries, coconut and tropical fruit, as well as some drying wood. A rather complex and interesting dram that turned out to be 123.6 – Rhubarb and Custard, matured for 10 years in a refill port pipe. While the society don’t officially give out what distillery each number goes with, 123 is Glengoyne, a distillery that until recently I’d almost entirely avoided but have become quite fond of in the last couple of weeks. They claim to be the only distillery to dry their barley with no peat whatsoever, using hot air instead, and have been running since 1833. They were taken over by Ian Macleod Distillers in 2003, as the company’s first only and currently only distillery, and since then have been making a lot of headway in the market. I need to try more of their whiskies…

Number three had a young and fruity nose, with some spirity alcohol, toffee, grapefruit and passion fruit – the last two flavours that I’ve been increasingly looking for in whisky. To taste there was fizzy sherbert, sweet lemons, cream and the caraway graininess of less mature whisky. It finished well, with lingering spiced wood, Tangfastic Haribo and more tropical fruit. A bit of a hit around the room and an annoyance when the label came of as it was Cask Strength and Carry On, a whisky from Arran bottled by the chaps at Caskstrength.net which sold out within a couple of days of release. I’ve still got a bit of the sample that Joel and Neil gave me when they released it, but annoyingly I didn’t try it until after they’d run out of bottles and didn’t get any myself. Luckily, Darren did acquire a few bottles (although whether that was by way of tax for his house being used as a staging point after the bottles were driven down from Arran is between Darren and the Caskstrength boys) and he donated one to the evening. There was even a Movember link with the Neil half of Caskstrength having been featured on one of the first Movember bottles. Well, his excellent moustache (now departed) was, at least.

Next up was one that I was fairly sure I’d guessed – a really dark and sticky dram. On the nose it was big and sherried – sugared raisins, the burnt edges from a beef joint, dark wood and rich fruit. To taste that continued, with lots of fruit – plums and stewed mixed winter berries – and some sticky liquorice at the back. The flavours hung around for a while with fruit and buttered wood. The label came off to show that I was right for once – it was the Movember 2011 bottling, a vatting of a couple of casks of 9 year old whisky from Glenfarclas. The barrels were chosen by Chris Hoban of the Edinburgh Whisky Blog and naturally there’s a post up over there about his visit to the distillery. It was sold exclusively by the chaps at Master of Malt (boo, hiss, etc) who donated all the profits to the Whisky4Movember fundraising effort (woo, yay, etc), picking up £6000 by the end of November. They are now sold out, but MoM do still have some samples left to buy.

Number five, the beginning of the second half, was a bit of a surprise at first, as after a run of three cask strength drams it was back to a normal 40%. On the nose it had Fry’s Turkish Delight, honey, red fruit and a touch of menthol. To taste it was creamy, with woody spic, some delicate polished wood flavours, and a lingering finish of wood and spice. A lot less powerful in alcohol than the last couple of drams but a nice contrast and very drinkable. A ripple of surprise spread around the room when the bottle turned out to be Balvenie Signature. I was rather pleased that my tasting notes match up with my usual take on Balvenie and it was impressive that it held up despite coming after some palate killing whiskies. Many thanks to Dr Andrew Forrester, Balvenie’s UK Brand Ambassador, for donating the bottle.

The next one was much lighter in colour and the first peaty whisky of the night – a nose of meaty smoke, dirty peat and mulched leaves all undercut by a young sweet spiritiness. To taste it had gritty smoke, sweet fruit and a metallic hint, finishing with tinned smoky fish and a lingering note of pineapple. A strange combination of flavours that made some sense when the whisky was revealed – Birnie Moss. This is a young peaty whisky from Benriach on Speyside, made with an eye towards the European market, especially Spain, Italy and France who love young fiery whisky and don’t mind a touch of smoke. Benriach don’t stop with Birnie Moss though, as their Curiositas is the same spirit left in the cask for a few extra years – an excellent peaty dram with some nice fruitiness underneath that the Birnie Moss shows some of the elegance of. This was a bit of a hit in the room, with at least a couple of bottles going on Christmas lists. Thanks to the Royal Mile Whiskies for the donation.

The penultimate whisky of the night was a step away from peat again, with a nose of spiced cream, sour fruit and a hint of balsamic vinegar. To taste it had fruity toffee, bananas, sweet apples and pears, and a burst of spicy cinnamon. It finished bitter, with green wood and some woody spice. Another slightly random whisky, this time from Jason’s collection, it was Glenmorangie Astar. I’ve written about it before, back in the olden days of this blog, and it’s a concentration of Glenmorangie’s experiments with interesting casks, using barrels made from wood from a forest that they specially selected, before the usual filling with bourbon, emptying, and shipping over to Scotland to be used to mature the whisky.

Finally we reached whisky number eight, another donation from the SWMS and one that was definitely an evening ender. On the nose the first note, that dominated almost everything else, was pickled onions, both real ones and the overpowering (and very tasty) smell of pickled onion Monster Munch. Underneath that there was sour fruit, some gravelly smoke, soured sherry, shoe polish and tomato ketchup. To taste it was full of coal, ash and coal smoke, with a back-end of sweet and sour sauce, baked beans and damp seaweed. The flavours lingered, with the smoke giving way to ash, ketchup, and spicy sweet and sour sauce. A strange and divisive whisky that I really wasn’t sure about, although I happily sat and sniffed at my glass for ages. It was revealed to be 29.104 – Not For Wee Boys, from Laphroaig, matured for 20 years in a refill sherry butt. A beast of a dram and one that had lost a lot of the typical Laphroaig medicinal nature due to the influence of the sherry wood – interesting and one that I hope to be able to grab a dram of next time I visit.

That was it for another month, although despite there being eight whiskies on the mat there was a trip to the bar downstairs for some more drinks, and a few more people left as members of the SMWS than arrived. December also has two meetups, the Christmas dinner later this week and the ‘everyone brings a bottle’ Whisky Surprise night (still some spaces left), which didn’t get a blog post last year due to the horrific drunkenness I managed to inflict on myself. Keep an eye on the Whisky Squad website for the announcement of January’s sessions, one of which I may have something to do with…

Compass Box Great King Street – The Artists’ Blend
Blended Scotch Whisky, 43%. ~£25 for a 50cl bottle

SMWS 123.6 – Rhubarb and Custard
Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 59.5%. ~£60

Cask Strength and Carry On
Island Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 49.9%. ~£50

Movember 2011
Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 53%. ~£40

Balvenie Signature
Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 40%. ~£35

Birnie Moss
Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 48%. ~£30

Glenmorangie Astar
Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 57.1%. ~£55

SMWS 29.104 – Not For Wee Boys
Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 58.2%. ~£70

There were some vaguely interesting bottles of whisky on there, along with some Caorunn Scottish Gin (that I had little nip of – it tasted of gin), but as I had a rather full rucksack to drag back south I decided to grab a box of miniatures – The silver boxed, BenRiach Classic Speyside collection.

Yes, I can see this is black. The slipcase outside the box was silver.

The silver box comment is only important because I found out at Whisky Live that they also do a gold detailed box which has some of their other whiskies in, including their peated Curiositas. It was very shortly after learning this that I bought a bottle of Curiositas (as seen in my recent whisky tasting) based on a) drunkenness b) the nice man giving me some distillery pin badges and c) my feeling slightly foolish at not having checked out what the other box on the shelf at the Heather Centre contained. Anyway, this box contains four 50cl bottles across their standard range.

First by age is the Heart of Speyside – the no age statement entry level single malt. It’s very lightly coloured and has sweet grain, vegetable oil and raisins on the nose – a bit like a boozey muesli (breakfast of champions). To taste it’s quite strange – quite fresh with flowers and heather, backed up with a slug of furniture polish. Whisky tasting assistant Anna hit the nail on the head – ‘Mr Sheen, but in a good way’. Water brought out some other flavours, with vanilla and Refreshers (the chalky loveheart ones, not the chews) joining the flowery, perfumed taste. Interesting, and definitely benefiting from a delicate dilution.

Next up is their 12 year old. This one continues the theme of the last, with flowers and furniture polish on the nose, but also has some caramel and toffee along with a generally increased richness, as you would hope with <unspecified number> of extra years in the barrel. To taste it has some woody vanilla and a warming spiciness, along with a slug of wood and a bit of linseed oil. Water rounds things out and makes it a lot sweeter, leaving honey and linseed oil fading to a woody taste on the finish. Quite nice, but a bit sweet for my liking.

Third in the box is the 16 year old. Again, this one is a development of the last, but this time some of the floweriness has gone, leaving light honey and heather, and a little bit of saltiness has crept in. To taste it’s very different, with leathery wood, tannins and a peppery smoke almost hiding the honey sweet oiliness of the previous two. A drop of water opens up the wood into a creamy vanilla, with a touch of smoke and a dry finish. I rather like this one and suspect a bottle may make its way into my cupboard at some time in the near future.

Last on the list is the 20 year old. Further development of flavour here, with a nose of oiled wood, caramel and damp cardboard. The wood has really influenced this one and at first it tastes almost like a dry bourbon, but on top of that there a chunk of sweet lemon, leather and dry tannins. A drop of water loosens the whole lot, softening the heavy woodiness to a creamy vanilla, allowing the honey and linseed of the younger whiskies to sneak out and be rounded off with a woody finish. A nice dram, yet again, but not a patch on the 16 for me.

Benriach Heart of Speyside
Speyside single malt whisky, no age statement, 40%, ~£25

Benriach Aged 12 Years
Speyside single malt whisky, 12 years old, 43%, ~£30

Benriach Aged 16 Years
Speyside single malt whisky, 16 years old, 43%, ~£40

Benriach Aged 20 Years
Speyside single malt whisky, 20 years old, 43%, ~£55

Compass Box Hedonism, Benromach Organic, Kilchoman New Spirit, Benriach Curiositas, Yamazaki Sherry Cask

So, here are my notes on what to say about each one, as well some audience reactions:

Compass Box Hedonism: There are number of different legal classifications of whisky, which due to recent lobbying by the SWA changed at the end of 2009. The three main types are:

• Single Malt Whisky – malt whisky from one distillery. It will be most probably be a mix of various different batches (to get a consistent flavour and style for each line of whisky), but all of the whisky comes from the same distillery.
• Blended Malt Whisky (formerly known as vatted malt) – changed November 2009, a move not entirely popular amongst many whisky makers. This is a blend of malt whiskies, which can come from any distillery. It is, however, only made up of malt whisky.
• Blended Whisky – whisky that is made of malt and grain whiskies from any producer.

This is a fourth type – a vatted grain (maybe now a blended grain…who knows?). While grain whisky is usually used as a bulking agent for blends, produced quite cheaply in a continuous rather than batch distillation process, there are some producers who take a more malt-like approach to its creation and there are companies who try and do interesting things with it – Compass Box are part of the latter group and buy whiskies from the former. Run by John Glaser (who corrected me last time I wrote about them), they produce interesting blended whiskies that are in a totally different league to the Bells and Teachers of this world. This has some flavours in common with a bourbon, coming from grain as it does, but definitely has a different style.

From the audience: It seemed to go down fairly well. It’s the lightest of the whiskies I was presenting, hence its position at the front of the line-up, and even the less keen whisky drinkers appreciated it.

Benromach Organic: The distillery reopened in 1996, after years of closure. Rather than the more regular ‘mothballing’ of the site, where they leave everything in place, Benromach was pretty much stripped of all its equipment and had to be almost rebuilt. Their regular whisky is lightly peated (slightly more than the Speyside norm of 0-5ppm of phenols at about 8-12) to try and capture the flavour of speyside whiskies when peat was a more common fuel for drying malt, but the Organic is different. It’s the first Soil Association certified organic whisky and as part of this process everything involved in the making needs to be organic, from malt to barrels. Whisky barrels are normally used before the whisky gets to them – sherry and bourbon are the two main spirits that go in beforehand, and they take on a lot of the woody flavour from the barrel, allowing whiskies to mature without extracting quite as much of those flavours. However, In order to keep with the organic certification the Benromach Organic uses new american oak barrels that have never seen another drop of booze. This whisky is also entirely unpeated, which is fairly normal on Speyside, although their stocks of the regular Organic are running out due to their switching of production to a peated version. I’m not a fan of the new “Special Edition Organic”, so I’m pleased that after a short while they switched back to the unpeated version, so while there will be a gap in availability it will be returning in the future.

From the audience: this one started off less popular, with the woodiness not well received. However, with a drop of water the flavour changes a lot, with creamy vanilla appearing, and it grew in popularity.

Kilchoman New Spirit: One of the problems with whisky production is the time it takes between making your whisky and making money from it. This is especially difficult for brand new distilleries as they have no older stock to keep themselves afloat with until they can start selling their wares. Kilchoman opened in 2005, the first new distillery on Islay in 124 years, and was setup to be slightly different. Their barley is grown on the attached farm, they are one of the last 6 distilleries who have their own maltings and they bottle on-site. In order to keep cash coming in they sold cask, case and bottle futures for their first production runs, keeping them going until they hit the 3 year mark at which their maturing spirit legally became whisky and could be sold as such. The first release was in 2009 and has been received quite well, although their upcoming 5 year is something I’m keeping an eye out for. Another way that they raised money was to sell samples of their maturing whisky – their New Spirit. This bottle doesn’t have a maturation time on it, but the otherwise identical one I bought at the same time claimed that it had been in wood for 1 week…

From the audience: I didn’t pour everyone a shot of this – a very young, heavily peated 63.5% spirit is not something that you generally knock back much of – instead pouring a small slug into a large wine glass so that everyone could get at least a smell. Almost everyone tried it in the end, with the reactions being what you’d expect for something that I generally describe as tasting like cattle feed and death. That said, I do quite like the flavour and there were a couple of nods that it wasn’t all that bad, even it was burny and eye watering.

BenRiach Curiositas: I’d not heard of the distillery until recently (and I now have a box of miniatures of their aged expressions to try) but heard of the Curiositas through Anna’s twitter stream when her friend Jon got a bottle and rather enjoyed it. The distillery is another that has changed hands a lot, recently being picked up by the independent Benriach Distillery Company (who recently picked up their second distillery – Glendronach) in 2004. It had a sad beginning, opening in 1892 and then mothballed in 1900 when the bottom fell out of the whisky market. It reopened in 1965 under Glenlivet, sold to Seagrams in 1978 and then dropped to a 3 days per week production in 2001, before the more recent purcahse. This is one is different because it’s a peated Speyside whisky. As I mentioned earlier Speyside whiskies are normally peated lightly to not at all, coming in at about 0-5ppm, with Islay whiskies like Laphroaig and Ardbeg being much more famed for their peaty smokiness (with barley peated to about 40ppm and 54ppm respectively). The Curiositas is peated to 55ppm – which is about as peaty as you get for a widely available whisky. They also have a younger version (3-5 years?) of their peated spirit, Birnie Moss, which I found at Whisky Live – it’s mainly sold into the French and Spanish markets, where there is a strangely high demand for young, unmellowed, peaty whisky.

From the audience: As expected this one was the least popular, although the speyside sweetness coming through the smoke brought it up the popularity scale quite a lot. The progression from raw spirit to matured whisky worked quite well though, with the mellowing process really showing (although choosing something as powerfully flavoured as the Kilchoman probably helped there).

Yamazaki Sherry Cask: The whisky that I ran from Blackfriars to Soho to buy the day before the tasting; one that I tried in Milroy’s at Christmas and rather liked. The difference with this one is that it’s Japanese, which isn’t really all that unusual as there are 90 years of history backing up their produce, and very heavily sherried, which is slightly more so. Whisky production in Japan was started by Shinjiro Torii, a pharmaceutical importer, who founded the company that became Suntory and started bringing foreign booze into Japan. He hired Masataka Taketsuru, who had trained at Hazelburn in Scotland (a name now used by the Springbank distillery to brand their triple distilled, unpeated Campbelltown whisky, as the original distillery has closed), to start distilling at the Yamazaki distillery and Japanese whisky was born. Taketsuru left Suntory in the 1930s, travelled around Japan looking for a spot that felt like Scotland and built a distillery in Yoichi on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, starting Nikka, the other famed Japanese distiller. The mix of whiskies that goes into a single malt will often contain at least some spirit matured in sherry casks and other whiskies will be matured for a length of time after they have been married together in a cask which has held sherry or another drink to ‘finish’. However, you don’t get many bottlings which have sat exclusively in a sherry cask for as long as this – a very dark reddy brown whisky, it almost looks like flat Coke and is a bit thicker and stickier than your average dram.

From the audience: Far and away the favourite of the night (which is one of the reasons why I did my cross-central-London run the day before to make sure I got some before Milroy’s closed). It’s sweet and rich, with fruitcake and dates. It’s quite unlike the ‘regular’ whisky flavour that people expect, although with enough hiding behind the dried fruit to remind you that you’re not drinking port. I’ve tried an even more heavily sherried Yamazaki at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, but that almost felt like a fortified dessert wine than a whisky – this is an excellent winter dram, and unfortunately one that seems to be becoming scarce as stocks start to sell out.

Anyways, my choices seemed to work and lasagna was fed to the assembled throng. On top of my selections there were also some pressies and temporary donations brought along, with Nikki‘s sloe gin, and Alan and Ruth‘s chocolate vodka, blackcurrant vodka, homebrew beer and bottle of Marble Chocolate Marble all sitting on the side waiting for me to do some tasting and writing about them. Alan also brought along his bottle of Glenallachie single cask 18yr old, also matured exclusively in sherry casks, to compare to the Yamazaki – it compared very well, coming in as the second favourite of the night on flavour and favourite for price – £35 from the web or in person at the Strathisla distillery, home of the Chivas Brothers experience…

I suspect this may happen again, especially as Nikki and Ruth now seem to be whisky converts. I must use my powers for good…

Alan and Anna have also done write-ups on their blogs and I think I need to give a general thanks to all of my victims for letting me talk at them for an afternoon: Anna, Alan, Ruth, Paul, Nikki and Michael.

Compass Box Hedonism
Blended scottish grain whisky
43%, component whiskies 14-29 years old
£45 from Waitrose

Benromach Organic
Unpeated Organic speyside whisky
No age statement, 5-6 years
43%. Limited stock available

Kilchoman New Spirit
Islay new spirit, 1 week old
43.5%. Occasionally available in whisky specialists (I got mine from Cadenhead’s in Edinburgh)

Benriach Curiositas
Peated speyside single malt whisky
40%, 10 years old. Peated to ~45ppm.
Available from whisky specialists (I got mine from The Whisky Shop)

Yamazaki Sherry Cask
Very sherried Japanese single malt whisky
48%, 10-12 years old
Limited availability – worldwide release of 16,000 bottles (I got mine from Milroy’s)